If you are a music reader, want you to pretend you know nothing about music notation. If you don't read music, you're all set. Now take what I'm about to write absolutely literally. "A quarter note gets one beat, and a half note gets two beats." Just from that description, do you know that the … Continue reading Describing Music and Teaching Music
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What’s In A Name?
Although we humans rely heavily on our senses of sight and hearing, our world would not make much sense to us if we did not have language in which to think, and words with which to know things. By naming something, our minds are able to categorize, connect, apply, analyze, evaluate, and represent everything that … Continue reading What’s In A Name?
Is Melody Always Music?
In my post on June 26, I defined melody as a sequence of tones, each of which has pitch and duration. We saw that melody did not have to have beat, rhythm, meter or tonality, just pitch and duration. I ended that post by suggesting that birdsong qualifies as melody, but questioned whether or not … Continue reading Is Melody Always Music?
What Is Rhythm?
Rhythm, though one of the two most basic elements of music (the other being pitch), is also one of the most often misunderstood. Rhythm is frequently presented to students in the form of a hierarchy of note types, with a whole note at the top, two half notes beneath, four quarter notes below them, and … Continue reading What Is Rhythm?
